A commentary on selections from HPB’s essay: THE “CURSE” FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL POINT OF VIEW.

I present here, a commentary on selections from HPB’s essay:
THE “CURSE” FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL POINT OF VIEW.

HPB: Meanwhile, one task is left incomplete: that of disposing of that most pernicious of all the theological dogmas — the CURSE under which mankind is alleged to have suffered ever since the supposed disobedience of Adam and Eve in the bower of Eden.
Creative powers in man were the gift of divine wisdom, not the result of sin. This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, who first curses Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed committed crime, and then blesses his “chosen people” by saying “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Gen. ix. 1).

pj: The creative power is of course, the power of sex; with this, we can not only create other human beings, but as the Tantrics clearly suggest, create all sorts of other beings and even other assets. The IXth Degree of the O.T.O. reveals the formula for a healing elixir as articulated in the GCL document: Liber Laiad. That this is touted as a gift of “divine wisdom” can even be given a Qabalistic interpretation; making Chokmah the generative force. Indeed, the Magus who is at the Grade attributed to Chokmah is charged with founding his own Magickal order.

HPB: The curse was not brought on mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological law. Nor was the curse of KARMA called down upon them for seeking natural union, as all the mindless animal-world does in its proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the life-essence for no purpose except bestial personal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of Genesis will be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the commencing Fourth Races. In the beginning, conception was as easy for woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that woman should bring forth her young ones “in sorrow.”

pj: This is perhaps the most disturbing problem to be faced by humanity. And I’m not sure that I can agree with Blavatsky here. For the Thelemite, we recognize that all vices are adorations to Hadit; and sensual pleasure would certainly be a vice. However, there’s a difference between sharing two bodies in sensual delight with ‘love under will’ and profligate sex, which leads to all forms of human decadence. In the later Roman Empire, this decadence was widespread, which led the emerging Christianity of Constantine to ban sex outside of the marriage bed by placing inordinate taboos over the sexual function. The Christist era has carried those taboos into the modern world; reaching the opposite extreme. And we find this suppression of a vital human drive, pushing its way out in the most obscene manner, from our advertising industry and in all sorts of industries; especially in the profligate sexuality of our entertainment industry. This has gotten to the point that decadence is again becoming our public religion. Ultimately, HPB makes a sound point; it simply needs a bit of clarification. Certainly the denigration of sex and its delimitation to the marriage bed and procreation only is not the answer. But that’s what happens when you attempt to legislate morality.

HPB: Since that period, however, during the evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity between its seed, and the “Serpent’s” seed, the seed or product of Karma and divine wisdom. For the seed of woman or lust, bruised the head of the seed of the fruit of wisdom and knowledge, by turning the holy mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the law of Karma “bruised the heel” of the Atlantean race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind (How wise and grand, how far-seeing and morally beneficent are the laws of Manu on connubial life, when compared with the licence tacitly allowed to man in civilized countries. That those laws have been neglected for the last two millenniums does not prevent us from admiring their forethought. The Brahmin was a grihasta, a family man, till a certain period of his life, when, after begetting a son, he broke with married life and became a chaste Yogi. His very connubial life was regulated by his Brahmin astrologer in accordance with his nature. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjab, for instance, where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later on of European, licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Aryan castes, one still finds the finest men — so far as stature and physical strength go — on the whole globe; whereas the mighty men of old have found themselves replaced in the Deccan, and especially in Bengal, by men whose generation becomes with every century (and almost with every year) dwarfed and weakened.), until, from the healthy King of animal creation of the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our race, a helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals! (Diseases and over-population are facts that can never be denied.)

pj: One can never separate the life of a commentator from the philosophical and theological opinions of that same commentator. And the same is true for Madame Blavatsky. As a young woman, she was forced to marry a man many years older than her; and who was emotionally and physically abusive. That’s the only explanation for the preceding paragraph, which reads as if it was written by a modern-day Fundamentalist Christian. Indeed, if such an idea were to hit the media through these Christists, we would be tearing it apart, aghast at the overt propagandizing. The statement is no different than saying that because the U.S. has given social and legal protections to the homosexual community, God saw fit to allow bin Laden to attack the World Trade Center.

HPB: This is the real CURSE from the physiological standpoint, almost the only one touched upon in the Kabalistic esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its progress hand-in-hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse instead of a blessing — a gift quickened by the “Lords of Wisdom,” who have poured on the human manas the fresh dew of their own spirit and essence. The divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to regret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically depicted by AEschylus, in his “Prometheus Bound,” when, at the close of the first Titanic age (the age that followed that of ethereal man, of the pious Kandu and Pramlocha), nascent, physical mankind, still mindless and (physiologically) senseless, is described as —
“Seeing, they saw in vain;
Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams,
Through the long time all things at random mixed.”
pj: Again, the secret of sexual procreation is the source of Magickal power; though that procreation need not be a human child. Not only is the Elixir of Life (the IXth Degree secret) a viable by-product of sexual union, but the electro-magnetic lightening bolt of illumination and the transformation of human flesh is contained in the orgasm itself; as clearly suggested in the writings of Wilhelm Reich. (cf. Function of the Orgasm) Even in his writings on ‘Orgone’ energy, we find a Western expression of the ancient teachings on Prana from the Hindu tradition and Chi from the Oriental tradition.

HPB: Our Saviours, the Agnishwatta and other divine “Sons of the Flame of Wisdom” (personified by the Greeks in Prometheus [In Mrs. Anna Swanwick’s volumes, “The Dramas of AEschylus,” it is said of “Prometheus Bound” (Vol. II., pp. 146, 147), that Prometheus truly appears in it “as the champion and benefactor of mankind, whose condition . . . . is depicted as weak and miserable in the extreme. . . . Zeus, it is said, proposed to annihilate these puny ephemerals, and to plant upon the earth a new race in their stead.” We see the Lords of Being doing likewise, and exterminating the first product of nature and the sea, in the Stanzas (V, et seq.). . . . Prometheus represents himself as having frustrated this design, and as being consequently subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most agonising pain, inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of Zeus. We have, thus, the Titan, the symbol of finite reason and free will (of intellectual humanity, or the higher aspect of Manas), depicted as the sublime philanthropist, while Zeus, the supreme deity of Hellas, is portrayed as the cruel and obdurate despot, a character peculiarly revolting to Athenian sentiment.” The reason for it is explained further on. The “Supreme Deity” bears, in every ancient Pantheon — including that of the Jews — a dual character, composed of light and shadow. ]), may well, in the injustice of the human heart, be left unrecognized and unthanked. They may, in our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora’s gift: but to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy, the EVIL ONES, is too heavy a Karma for “Him” “who dared alone “– when Zeus “ardently desired” to quench the entire human race — to save “that mortal race” from perdition…

pj: This reads quite like the Sumerian myth of Enlil and Enki, from which also is drawn the myth of the casting out of Lucifer from heaven. From an essay on this myth at crystalinks.com, we read:

Within his sacred precinct ‘Mound of Creation’ in Eridu, Enki unraveled the secrets of life and death. His emblem was two serpents [twin human DNA] entwined on a staff – the basis for the winged caduceus symbol used by modern Western medicine. Enki was the god who created the first humans. His sacred number is 40.
Enki was the leader of the first sons of Anu that came down to Earth. He played the pivotal role in saving humanity from the global Deluge. He defied the Anunnaki ruling council and told Ziusudra (the Sumerian Noah) how to build a ship on which to save humanity from the killing flood.

pj: In pseudpegriphal lore, Lucifer defies God and is cast out from heaven. Interestingly enough, the number 40 in the English Qabalah is the letter ‘V’; transliterated as Vau into Hebrew, subsequently connected to the Hierophant Atu. 40 is also the word ‘Us’ in the English Qabalah, which has a special significance in Liber AL; Us being the Company of Heaven. In the Hebrew Qabalah, 40 is the value of such words as ‘Liberator’ (title of Yesod GVAL) and ‘The Hand of the Eterneal YD YHVH’. The former clearly suggesting the Nightside of the Tree-of-Life and the latter suggesting immortality. Returning to the excerpts from HPB’s essay…

HPB: Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato’s “Protagoras,” with that “wisdom which ministers to physical well-being,” but the lower aspect of manas of the animal (Kama) having remained unchanged, instead of “an untainted mind, heaven’s first gift” (AEschylus), there was created the eternal vulture of the ever unsatisfied desire, of regret and despair coupled with “the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals” (p. 556), unto the day when Prometheus is released by his heaven-appointed deliverer, Herakles.

pj: Enki is the god of the Earth and brings healing; interestingly enough, women, being connected to the Earth, were said by the early Christians, to be Satanic in their nature; witches because they were involved in healing and the use of herbs. It is the ‘Saviour’ who redeems them when they eschew their sensuality and sexuality; prizing virginity over their natural function.

HPB: Now Christians — Roman Catholics especially — have tried to prophetically connect this drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake could be made. The true theosophist, the pursuer of divine wisdom and worshipper of ABSOLUTE perfection — the unknown deity which is neither Zeus nor Jehovah — will demur to such an idea. Pointing to antiquity he will prove that there never was an original sin, but only an abuse of physical intelligence — the psychic being guided by the animal, and both putting out the light of the spiritual. He will say, “All ye who can read between the lines, study ancient wisdom in the old dramas — the Indian and the Greek; read carefully the one just mentioned, one enacted on the theatres of Athens 2,400 years ago, namely ‘Prometheus Bound’ ” The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor AEschylus; but, as Bunsen says, it “is older than the Hellenes themselves,” for it belongs, in truth, to the dawn of human consciousness. The Crucified Titan is the personified symbol of the collective Logos, the “Host,” and of the “Lords of Wisdom” or the HEAVENLY MAN, who incarnated in Humanity.

pj: It now becomes easy to see why Crowley asserts in the Wake World, that Satan is our saviour. In the eschatology of the ancient Gnostics, Jehovah is the demiurge and in light of the Sumerian myth, is also the destroyer. As found in my article, The Third Covenant, Sir Laurence Gardner states at a Nexus lecture in Sydney, Australia:

The old writings tell us that throughout the patriarchal era the Israelites endeavoured to support Adon, the Lord, but at every turn El Shaddai (the storm god, Jehovah) retaliated with floods, tempests, famines and destruction. Even at the very last (around 600 BC), the Bible explains that Jerusalem was overthrown at Jehovah’s bidding and tens of thousands of Jews were taken into Babylonian captivity simply because their King (a descendant of King David) had erected altars in veneration of Baal, the Adon.

pj: Baal or the Adon, would be equivalent to Enki as Jehovah would be Enlil, his brother and god of the storm winds. Returning our excerpts…

HPB: Moreover, as his name Pro-me-theus, meaning “he who sees before him” or futurity, shows (From [[pro metis]] pro metis, “forethought.” “Professor Kuhn,” we are told in the above-named volumes of “The Dramas of AEschylus,” “considers the name of the Titan to be derived from the Sanskrit word Pramantha, the instrument used for kindling fire. The root mand or manth, implies rotatory motion, and the word manthami (used to denote the process of fire kindling) acquired the secondary sense of snatching away; hence we find another word of the same stock, pramatha, signifying theft.” This is very ingenious, but perhaps not altogether correct; besides, there is a very prosaic element in it. No doubt in physical nature, the higher forms may develop from the lower ones, but it is hardly so in the world of thought. And as we are told that the word manthami passed into the Greek language and became the word manthano, to learn; that is to say, to appropriate knowledge; whence prometheia, fore-knowledge, fore-thought; we may find, in searching, a more poetical origin for the “fire-bringer” than that displayed in its Sanskrit origin. The Svastica, the sacred sign and the instrument for kindling sacred fire, may explain it better. “Prometheus, the fire-bringer, is the Pramantha personified,” goes on the author; “he finds his prototype in the Aryan Matarisvan, a divine . . . . personage, closely associated with the fire god of the Veda, Agni. . . .” Mati, in Sanskrit, is “understanding,” and a synonym of MAHAT and manas, and must be of some account in the origin of the name: Promati is the son of Fohat, and has his story also.) — in the arts he devised and taught to humanity, psychological insight was not the least.

pj: From the above, we can see that prophecy is then connected with spiritual (fire) thought, stolen (sotospeak) from heaven. In other words, prophecy is not something that comes to us by way of the grace of God, but something we must actively pursue. We then take sides in the debate within the ancient Merkabah tradition. There were those in the ancient Hebrew community that determined that one must wait for an oracle to come from God’s grace; and then there were the chariot riders, those who deliberately induced the experience that would provide visions; the recordings of which were called apocalypses.
This spiritual fire is a two-edged sword, consistent with the symbol of the Swastika (and dealt with so aptly in the television series: Babalon 5). The deosil Swastika represents the creative fire of the arts and sciences; aiding human evolution along aesthetic lines (the race of Vorlons in B5); the widdershins spinning Swastika (the one adopted by the Third Reich) represents the destructive fire, giving us the idea of human evolution through strength gained in the trial of war; survival of the fittest (the race of the Shadows in B5). Both are human archetypes.

HPB: Leaving for a few pages the main subject, let us pause and see what may be the hidden meaning of this, the most ancient as it is the most suggestive of traditional allegories. As it relates directly to the early races, this will be no real digression.
The subject of AEschylus’ drama (the trilogy is lost) is known to all cultured readers. The demi-god robs the gods (the Elohim) of their secret — the mystery of the creative fire. For this sacrilegious attempt he is struck down by KRONOS (Kronos is “time,” and thus the allegory becomes very suggestive.) and delivered unto Zeus, the FATHER and creator of a mankind which he would wish to have blind intellectually, and animal-like; a personal deity, which will not see MAN “like one of us.”

pj: The time/space continuum is the material Universe. Being “struck down by KRONOS” is saying alleghorically, that the light of spirit has descended into matter; with Prometheus being the archetype of this spiritual light, incorporated into human flesh. This exists in actuality, as discussed in the GCL document, Liber Vox Viva Voce vel Video, it is pure light, the phosphorylation, that is the central strand holding the double-helix of the DNA together.

HPB: Hence Prometheus, “the fire and light-giver,” is chained on Mount Caucasus and condemned to suffer torture. But the triform Fates (Karma), whose decrees, as the Titan says, even Zeus: —
“E’en he the fore-ordained cannot escape. . . ”
— ordain that those sufferings will last only to that day when a son of Zeus —
“Ay, a son bearing stronger than his sire” (787)
. . . . . . . . . .
“One of thine (Io’s) own descendants it must be. .”(791)
— is born. This “Son” will deliver Prometheus (the suffering Humanity) from his own fatal gift. His name is, “He who has to come. . . . ”

pj: As I’ve speculated in the GCL document, The Formula of ON, the Golden Child is one possible idea of this one “who has to come.” I’ll reproduce the entire but brief essay below; but what I don’t say in the essay, is implicit in the verse quoted from AL.

On the Golden Childe

AL III.47: “This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all. Then this line drawn is a key: then this circle squared in its failure is a key also. And Abrahadabra. It shall be his child & that strangely. Let him not seek after this; for thereby alone can he fall from it.”

If we consider the drawing of energy from Tiphareth (Soul or Sulphur) by both partners in the working of the Formula of ON, and we consider their connection by the path of Peh, we formulate a triangle. Samekh descends from this to Yesod, the house where the business is done. And the glyph for Sulphur is drawn. Samekh connects to Yesod, but a square is not drawn, though we’ve used four lines. And there is no completed circuit or circle because of this. Samekh is an important key in the Alchemical formula as it represents the Coagula, which in this case would be between the male and female operators. But it holds no direct place in the operation of the formula. [1]

Rendering the square as a circle with Peh cutting its diameter, we get the symbol for Salt. With the praeter-human intelligence indwelling the Ruach, an astral body is manifested. But the soul or Sulphur is as yet, Volatile; due to the fact that the triangle has its apex upwards. Fortifying the coagula would give weight to the force and bring it into Yesod, where it is at the peak of manifestation. Now an inverted triangle is formulated and the soul or Sulphur becomes fixed.

Above all of this is Kether with the Ain Soph Aur for a crown. Gimel is the line drawn down; crossed by Daleth, the Abyss and Teth. The symbol of Mercury is formulated. This becomes actuated as the partners fulfill the working of this formula. Therein, the female actuates her male nature; Netzach becomes Chokmah. And the male actuates his female nature; Hod becomes Binah.

Returning to the excerpts from HPB’s essay…

HPB: On the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other allegorical sentence, may be twisted into almost any meaning; namely, on the words pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to Io, the daughter of Inachos, persecuted by Zeus — a whole prophecy is constructed by some Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan: —
“And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks
By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase
Wast hailed as the illustrious spouse of Zeus
. . . . . . . . . (v. 853).
. . . . stroking thee
With touch alone of unalarming hand;
Then thou dark Epaphos shalt bear, whose name
Records his sacred gendering . . . . ” (870)
This was construed by several fanatics — des Mousseaux and de Mirville amongst others — into a clear prophecy. Io — “is the mother of God,” we are told, and “dark Epaphos” — Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his father, except metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that “Father”; nor has the Christian Saviour hurled his Father down into Hades. Prometheus says, in verse 930, that Zeus will be humbled yet; as for himself: —
” . . . . such marriage he prepares
Which from his throne of power to nothingness
Shall hurl him down; so shall be all fulfilled
His father Kronos’ curse . . . .
. . . . Then let him sit
Confiding in his lofty thunder-peals,
And wielding with both hands the fiery bolt;
For these shall not avail, but fail he shall,
A fall disgraceful, not to be endured . . . . ” (v. 980).
“Dark Epaphos” was the Dionysos-Sabazius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter in the Sabasian Mysteries, during which the “father of the gods,” assuming the shape of a Serpent, begot on Demeter, Dionysos, or the solar Bacchus. Io is the moon, and at the same time the EVE of a new race, and so is Demeter — in the present case. The Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but it does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours who have appeared periodically in various countries and among various nations, in their transitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the mysteries of cyclic transformations, in the series of which mankind, having passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state, from spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the opposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its primitive state, when woman knew no man, and human progeny was created, not begotten.
That state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter shall discover and really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast problem of sex. It will be like “the light that never shone on sea or land,” and has to come to men through the Theosophical Society. That light will lead on and up to the true spiritual intuition. Then (as expressed once in a letter to a theosophist), “the world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs, for the world will have discovered that individuals have it in their own powers to procreate Buddha-like children — or demons.” “When that knowledge comes, all dogmatic religions, and with these the demons, will die out.”

pj: Adding to my above comments on sex, through the proper application, utilizing the formula of Love under Will, ultimately, a eugenic program can be inaugurated; one of the reasons for building an A.’.A.’. lineage and establishing churches in the A.M.H.R. Successive generations, overcoming the sexual weaknesses inherent in the present generation, may ultimately produce this Golden Child; the true Magickal Childe, and subsequently, a descendant race of such children. And I can speculate at this point, that perhaps, in this inversion (as HPB says: “having passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state, from spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the opposite arc of the cycle”) we may see the same in the operation of the human cell; where now, the mitochondria, or the aggregrate of these material beings (Eukaryotes & Prokaryotes as discussed in Liber Vox Viva Voce vel Video) that now comprise our total being and our consciousness, controls the DNA, reverses the direction with the DNA and its central light (phosphorylation) controlling the mitochondria.

HPB: If we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the character of the heroes, the mystery may be unriddled. KRONOS is of course “time” in its cyclic course. He swallows his children — the personal gods of exoteric dogmas included. He has swallowed instead of Zeus, his stone idol; but the symbol has grown, and has only developed in human fancy as mankind was cycling down toward only its physical and intellectual — not spiritual — perfection. When it is as far advanced in its spiritual evolution Kronos will be no longer deceived. Instead of the stone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction itself. Because, the serpent of wisdom, represented in the Sabasian mysteries by the anthropomorphised Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers, will have begotten in Time (Kronos) a progeny — Dionysos-Bacchus or the “dark Epaphos,” the “mighty one” — the race that will overthrow him. Where will he be born? Prometheus traces him to his origin and birth-place in his prophecy to Io. Io is the moon-goddess of generation — for she is Isis and she is Eve, the great mother.

pj: In the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz, it is Isis who initiates; she is the one that opens the veil of the mysteries. The Rosicrucians thought themselves to represent the onset of the Age of Aquarius. And I will grant that at least, they represented a foreshadow or a foretelling (Prometheus) of what is to come.

HPB: There is one eternal Law in nature, one that always tends to adjust contraries and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false gods, and find itself finally — SELF-REDEEMED.

pj: As we take responsibility for our own lives (instead of having some blind force like Jesus to ‘absolve us of our sins’), we begin the journey that takes us on our own mystery quest. This is the alleghory of the Chemical Wedding. We must find Initiation; it is the key to our evolution.

HPB: For the Host that incarnated in a portion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free-will to passive slavery, intellectual self-conscious pain and even torture “while myriad time shall flow” — to inane, imbecile, instinctual beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the programme of nature, the heavenly host, “Prometheus,” still sacrificed itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind. (Mankind is obviously divided into god-informed men and lower human creatures.

pj: A quote from Nuit in Liber AL seems appropriate here:

AL I.60: “My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us. The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red. My colour is black to the blind, but the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also I have a secret glory for them that love me.”

And a couple of quotes from Hadit…

AL II.19: “Is a God to live in a dog? No! but the highest are of us. They shall rejoice, our chosen: who sorroweth is not of us.”
AL II.20: “Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us.”